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First published in Polish by Barbara Habrych

The labour market is undergoing dynamic change. Various reports and studies try to outdo each other in predicting how many new jobs will be created in the next few years. They examine how many jobs we know today will disappear because they will no longer be needed and which one they will be. 

How can you help adult learners prepare for these changes?

To answer this question, you need to take a close look at the concept of employability.

Mantz Yorke defines employability as “a set of achievements – skills, understandings and personal attributes – that makes graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations".[i]
Employability is important at all stages of working life and can be divided into three types:

1. initial employability or the ability to take up the first job, 

2. internal employability understood as the ability to ‘move up the company ladder’ with increasing responsibility and power,

3. external employability, i.e. the ability to switch employers [ii].

Employability consists of several categories [iii]:

• qualifications, i.e. education and formal professional qualifications,
• basic professional knowledge acquired through professional experience or the ability to do a specific job,
• commonly valued transferable skills - e.g. foreign language proficiency,
• basic transferable skills, i.e. - writing, numeracy, reading comprehension, presentation and self-presentation skills.

These are basic requirements, the importance of which is widely recognised by all those involved in the labour market.

Equally important are personal and key transferable skills. The research described by D. Strycharczyk and P. Clough [iv]. provides an interesting and very simple illustration of this. They asked employers what they expected from their employees. The answers allowed them to identify four categories of skills, which complement the concept of employability with personal traits. These include:

• Resilience,
• Ability to deal with problems,
• Motivation and motivating factors,
• Interpersonal skills.

Below you can a brief discussion of them.

Resilience [v]

Employers value employees who can cope with stress, work under pressure, and face challenges, regardless of circumstances.

The following elements of employability can be distinguished within the framework of resilience:

1. Resilience understood as the ability to cope with adversity and overcome obstacles. It includes two dimensions:

• Control, i.e. self-control, emotional regulation, cold-bloodedness,
• Commitment - willingness to make and keep commitments and to achieve goals,

2. Positive attitude towards tasks, which consists of:

• Challenge - being flexible and taking on tasks that are slightly beyond your capabilities,
• Confidence - belief in your abilities and ability to deal with others.

Ability to deal with problems 

Employers are looking for people who can identify problems, be pro-active in finding solutions, optimise processes and deliver results.

The components of this skill include:

3. Developing coping skills, mainly through:

• Problem solving - recognizing, confronting, analysing and proposing solutions,
• Creativity - looking for new ideas, innovating, improving work.

4. Striving for excellence (doing things well and improving), which comprises:

• Organisation - structuring, ordering, sequencing, waste elimination,
• Continuous improvement - optimising, looking for ways to improve.

Motivation and motivating factors

Employers value employees who approach tasks with enthusiasm and who are intrinsically motivated.

This indicator includes:

5.  Willingness to carry out duties properly:

• Conscientiousness - respecting standards, values and principles,
• Focus on Quality - performing to the highest standards, getting the job done.

6.    Taking responsibility for professional development and the realisation of one's full potential:

• Ambition - being achievement-oriented,
• Personal development - learning and growing.

Interpersonal skills

Employers value people who build successful relationships and can achieve goals with other people.

These skills are described as:

7. Inter-personal skills:

• Teamwork - sharing knowledge and experience, working together to achieve a common goal for the team,
• Altruism - acting for the good of others.

8. The ability to influence people:

• Emotional intelligence - being aware of one's own emotions and those of others, and understanding the reactions of others,
• Assertiveness - asserting one's rights without violating the rights of others.

How to use this model in work with adults and young adults?

Rather than seeing employability development as a challenge to collect more certificates, diplomas and degrees, one can point out that employability can be approached and developed as an attitude.

In pedagogy, an attitude towards a phenomenon, situation, person or object consists of three components:

1. cognitive - knowledge, beliefs, opinions,
2. emotional - feelings, motivators,
3. behavioural - actions, behaviours.

This classification of factors can provide the basis for questions that can help an employability practitioner assess the level of development of each of the attitude components. 

Below you can find exemplary questions for the control factor:

Emotional component: What are your feelings when you are in a situation that requires you to keep your cool? Are these feelings difficult or supportive?

Cognitive component: What do you know about regulating emotions? What methods do you know to keep calm in a difficult situation?

Behavioural component: How do you handle a difficult situation? Give an example of a situation where you were in control. What behaviours do you want to work on?

Following this train of thought, questions can be prepared for each of the 16 factors.

For the purpose of working with clients, you can use the tool I have developed as an Epale resource: Four Dimensions of Employability.

Filling in the tables with the educator's questions will help you identify employability strengths and diagnose skills gaps.

You will also receive information about whether you need to expand your knowledge, work on limiting beliefs, blockages and difficult emotions or adopt appropriate behaviour and habits.

This tool can be used as a source of inspiration by career counsellors, tutors and other educators working with adults and young adults.